Naming Day
by DarkSeverus
Summary: A collection of three vignettes examining the relationship between the characters, their past experiences, and the meaning behind their names. Chapter One: Bumi. Chapter Two: Aang.
1. Bhumi

**Naming Day  
**Chapter 1 – _Bhumi_

His mother chose to name him in the ancient language, perhaps thinking that both the spirituality and the potency of the old ways were that much greater than their newer, more diluted counterparts. It was uncanny, actually, how she ultimately chose to name him after the Earth. It was as if she had known all along from the moment of his birth that, in the years to come, her son would grow to become one of the most powerful and most respected earthbenders the world had ever seen.

Unfortunately, she only lived long enough to name him Bumi.

She had always been a delicate, slight creature, and a taxing nine-month pregnancy, coupled with the excruciating pain of over thirty hours of labor, had taken a serious toll on her body. Her health immediately and suddenly failed the day after his birthday, and exactly forty-eight hours after his umbilical cord had been severed, she died.

Years later, he realized that perhaps his father would not have blamed him for the incident if he hadn't turned out to be such an ugly child.

And an ugly child he was, for he had inherited neither the chiseled, handsome features of his sire nor the grace and poise of his mother. In fact, it was a surprise that he was their son at all, considering what attractive people both of his parents had been. He, on the other hand, was both unpleasant to look at and unpleasant to listen to, for not only was his face lopsided and his hair thick, unruly, and coarse, but his voice was grating and distasteful as well, even in infancy. It was a wonder that his father kept him around at all, considering the man could barely look at him without cringing in disgust, and yet despite this obvious dislike, he was never disowned. Perhaps the fact that he was his mother's son was the main reason for this, because it was clear that his father had loved his mother much more than he could ever have loved him. Thus, he remained, throughout his childhood and until his father's death, the crown prince of Omashu.

Even in the harshest of conditions, children continue to grow, and grow he did. Despite the fact that both his father and his people rejected him due to his appearance, his early childhood was nonetheless relatively happy. He spent most of his early years in the royal gardens, playing and exploring under the careful supervision of an elderly servant woman named Ran. Originally a kitchen maid, she had taken upon the role of his caretaker at the direction of his father. After three years of nursing, watching, feeding, and teaching him, she grew to be quite fond of the eccentric yet extremely bright child that had been placed in her custody, and he felt the same for her.

She never got to see how far his brightness would take him, however, for she died quietly in her sleep when he was three.

Two months after she passed away, he bent his first rock.

And after that, things were never the same.

* * *

It was the eve of the Spring Carnival, and one of his father's guests had gotten thoroughly and hopelessly drunk during the festivities. In an alcoholic stupor, the nobleman, a reputable earthbender in his own right, complained loudly of the poor quality of the dish he had just been served at dinner. Further angered by the irritated looks the other guests at the event were throwing at him, he flew into a childish rage and roughly pushed at the stone table in front of him to express his displeasure, unawares that the massive table was over six feet in length and must have weighed well over a ton. Despite the table's size, however, it shot out from under dozens of platters of food to barrel at dangerous speeds towards the unsuspecting toddler that was Bumi, the king's heir and only son, who had been sitting quietly in a corner, playing by himself.

There was no time for anyone to react. In all rights, he should have been crushed and immediately killed.

Somewhere deep in his memory, he remembers how a servant girl had screamed.

She shouldn't have worried.

The table shattered to dust on impact. When the debris cleared, the chamber full of awestruck nobles and servants was surprised to find him sitting completely unharmed on top of a small mountain's worth of rubble. While he was bewildered and slightly confused, there was not a single physical injury on him.

He remembers how the dining hall went completely and eerily silent as his father had slowly risen from his seat.

The king strode over to where his son sat and squatted down in front of him. Then, for the first time in his life, he looked at his son with something other than disgust in his eyes.

It was awe.

His training began the very next day. So did the whispers. _Genius_, they called him. _A master borne of the heavens_.

He only wished that geniuses and masters did no have to be so lonely.

It was not until years later, when a young airbender from the Southern Temple came calling at Omashu, that he understood what it meant to have a friend.

After the boy left, he asked his father to buy him a pet goat-gorilla. He named it Flopsie.

And he stopped feeling like he was alone.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**_Bhumi_ refers to the Earth element of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This information is borrowed from Wikipedia.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Any and all characters belonging to _Avatar, the Last Airbender_ are the legal property of Nickelodeon. 


	2. An Ang

**Naming Day**  
Chapter 2 – _An Ang_

Although he never knew it, his given name was Qing, or "celebration."

He was the eldest son and only child born to a poor young couple living in a small village located at the base of the legendary Song Mountain, home of the Southern Air Temple. His father was a farmer who owned a small patch of land on which he grew vegetables and raised livestock, and his mother was a local seamstress who mostly performed patchwork and other mending jobs for the neighbors. While the two had little money and often found it difficult to even get by, they were in love and happy with their simple lives, and the addition of a child to their small but warm family was a very welcome event to them indeed.

He never knew it, but to his parents, he was more important than the sun and stars.

Fate, however, can be cruel. His loving parents didn't live long. Before he even reached his first birthday, the small village was ravaged by a terrible wave of disease. Blood sickness, the villagers called it. It was highly contagious and extremely deadly, and its victims oftentimes suffered through days and days of horribly bloody and painful contortions before the disease ultimately claimed them.

Miraculously, he survived.

Sadly, however, he was the only one from his village who did.

When the monks descended the mountain to bury the dead and lay their spirits to rest, they were surprised to find him bundled up in his crib – cold, hungry, and crying – but alive. They took him in and nursed him back to health. However, because there were no records in the village of who he was or where he came from, they knew nothing of his parentage or of his name, and so the boy named Qing was lost forever.

Little did he know that one day, a man named Giatso would give him a new name, and that this new name would suit him much more than the old one ever could.

_An Ang_, they would call him.

_The soaring peace._

* * *

He remained nameless for almost an entire year. Most of the monks simply referred to him as _xiao di_, or "little brother." As he was the youngest resident living in the monastery, it was a fitting nickname that described his relationship with the others fairly well. While he remembered very little of this time, he nevertheless did remember how unconditionally his new family accepted and welcomed him into their home. There was never a question that he belonged with them, and for that, he was grateful. 

One day he remembers with almost impeccable clarity. It was the summer that he turned two, when the other air nomads were excitedly preparing for the arrival of someone named Giatso, a man who had spent a two year period training the disciples of the Northern Air Temple. He was playing by himself in the sunny courtyard when an elderly man with the tattoos of a master approached him. The old man cheerfully offered him some icing off of a freshly baked fruit pie, and with the first taste of the sweet, gooey icing, the two of them formed the beginning bonds of friendship.

Then, two months before his fourth birthday, he accidentally sent himself flying over a hundred feet in the air with a particularly violent sneeze.

The monks began his airbending training immediately. That and, after they allowed him to have his pick from a room filled to the brim with toys, they put him under the exclusive tutelage of the esteemed monk Giatso. His life, for a while, was simple and happy. He enjoyed being Aang, pupil of Giatso and the inventor of the Air Scooter. He enjoyed spending seemingly endless, happy days as Aang, companion of Appa and expert fruit pie baker extraordinaire. He enjoyed having no greater care in the world besides thinking on how to fulfill his responsibility as the temple's official prankster, the one the other disciples had chosen as their leader in duping the elderly airbending masters.

Then one day, everything changed. The elders ordered an assembly of the high council, and in a blunt and ruthless meeting, he was informed that he had never been just Aang at all. Everything that he had been up to that day – who he was, what he liked to do, his entire identity – was crushed under the weight of the news they had kept from him for all these years.

As it turned out, he had always been Aang _and_, simultaneously, the Avatar.

All this time, he had been the next master of four elements.

He had been the savior of the world.

And, with the crushing weight of the world and of Fate on his shoulders, he finally realized how much he missed just being himself.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Aang's name as written in Chinese is made up of two characters. The first, _an_, means peace or calm, while the second, _ang_, means to soar or fly. The characters for Aang's name are taken from Book 2, Episode 15, "The Tales of Ba Sing Se". 

Song Mountain, or _Song Shan_ in Mandarin, is the name of a real mountain located in the Henan province of China. I chose to borrow its name for this chapter because it is the home of the Shaolin monastery, one of China's oldest and most revered Buddhist temples. The monks of the temple are famous all over the world for their lifelong dedication to the Buddhist religion and also for their incredible martial arts abilities. I felt that the home of the Shaolin monks would be a fitting parallel for that of the air nomads since both groups live simple and honest lives dedicated to self-exploration, discipline, and the search for enlightenment.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Any and all characters belonging to _Avatar, the Last Airbender_ are the legal property of Nickelodeon. 


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